


Even the Darkness Has Arms

by aveyune23



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-13 00:38:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9097819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aveyune23/pseuds/aveyune23
Summary: They weren't innocents. They had lied and stolen and killed. But their sins had brought them here, to the end of the line, and their sins were all they had left.





	

They weren’t innocents.

The had lied, and stolen, and killed. They had done things -- he, in the name of a greater cause; she, merely to survive -- that they could not take back.

There was no repenting for their sins. They had acted in full knowledge of the consequences, had gone into their respective trades knowing full-well what it would cost their souls.

Maybe that was what had drawn them together -- their mirrored dark hearts.

They had seen themselves in each others actions, in each others blackness. 

They had crawled from childhood through a war, tearing the skin on their palms and breaking their fingernails trying to grab purchase on the shattered remains of their individual worlds.

She had resented him for his blind faith and the acts he had committed in the name of it. He had disdained her ability to abandon everything for the sake of her own survival. 

And yet -- none of it ended up getting them anywhere, except on a beach on a world at the ends of the galaxy, their fingers laced together and their eyes locked on a devastatingly beautiful horizon.

A reluctant partnership, a betrayal, a grudging acceptance, a blossoming sense of respect -- their timeline had been short, and was about to be cut shorter still. 

Where were they now? They chanced a glance at the other and found nothing but exhaustion and grime and relief that it was over. It was over.

The hope that had carried them this far -- others would pick up that torch and continue on. Their leg of the race was over.

All they had left was what was next to them on the sand: each other.

It wasn’t love. It might have been, or not -- their opportunity to explore that path had been taken from them. No, not taken. They had willingly given it up.

But now, with nothing left ahead of them except a green and white sky...

They didn’t know -- didn’t care -- who reached out first. One moment they were apart, joined only by their intertwined fingers, the next locked in an embrace so tight, so tragically intimate, that they could no longer separate “they” and “I.”

She felt his lips at the junction of her shoulder and neck, and she clung tighter. She felt like crying -- not out of fear of death, but because of how beautiful he looked, how warm he felt in her arms, for a life with him that she would never get to attempt.

Her hair was soft against his cheek, and nothing stopped him from cradling her head in his hand and burying his fingers beneath the knot she wore at the nape of her neck. He breathed deep her scent, imagining what she might look like with her hair down. He thought of her smile, that small and childlike thing she had graced him with at the top of the tower.

The light grew bright behind their eyelids. The last thing they knew was their shared breath as the air evaporated around them.

It wasn’t love, but it was something like it, and that was enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.


End file.
